Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, blackbird, clouds, harvest festival, hills, landscape, mist, Poetry, rain, seaons, silence, song, time, valleys on October 6, 2013| 4 Comments »
HARVEST FESTIVAL
Cloud rests, winged.
Feathered, these upland mists.
Green grey the day along
Swathed and shrouded hills.
The still, one prayer, arcs
The scooped valleys.
(Pitted the stones,
Time-pocked).
A bell, a peal:
A gathered fruitfulness,
A hymnal of sunlit days.
In sainted, beached ship,
Sails of praise turn tides.
We become indwelling,
Folded,
The promise of rain,
The blackbird’s quiver-
Heart arrowed, liquid.
——
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, cities, emptiness enclosed, leaf fall, October, Poetry, rain, rush-hour, the lie of cities(ever empty), time-lapse on October 4, 2013| 4 Comments »
STILL VOIDED CITIES
How it is and how it seems:
The stuttered view,
Rain slanting in on warm southerlies
Grey, in tides, in waves,
A breath moist muttering
This first week of October,
(Shadows between green leaves
Turning purple,
Purple the ash keys, heavy
Beween wan, limp fingers
Counting the paling
Shortening days).
The engineer’s equations,
Crisp and sure:
The city walls
Disregarding season’s
Rise and fall.
Crystalline, always empty,
No shelter
( but a shell of concept),
Eternally still,
Void of heart
Where life slumps in
Sad blood rides,
Tides of melting
Soft flesh
Too swift to notice
This stark contrast-
Change and no change,
( the walls slow stain
With debris
Of swollen dreams
Fostered and forsworn
In these winded voids
And passageways),
These cities
Always silent, sublime,
Lit and shadowed
On a whim.
No place
For the slow dry arc,
The turning leaf
Falling in late sunlight
Lost trampled on asphalt
(The smell of new rain).
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art prints, Autumn, Haiku-ish, landscape, mandala, Poetry, seasons on September 21, 2013| 5 Comments »
As it is almost Autumn Equinox, here are two short seasonal pieces that arose recently.
FLICKER
He cools the air, calling crow,
A rasp of drift, the crisping leaves.
All things desire to sink earthwards
Towards a fitting sleep.
The sky left more void, blue, vast,
Scraped clear – the circling cry of buzzards.
It gutters, flares and flickers:
The nub of summer.
We become atmospheric, vapourous.
We are tumbled down, crumbled to autumn.
Made old, aged again,
Circumscribed, hemmed in
By hours of darkness.
—–
RETURNING
Light pushed at day’s end,
A cold, blue edge.
All hearts, filling, emptying, filling.
The year grows small again,
Summer’s passion eases.
We can go home,
Look inside,
Light fires,
Dream dreams.
—–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, diary, fleeting flitters, gestures, Haiku, landscape, mind weather, momento vita, penmanship, phrases, Poetry, ruins, short poems, William Blake, word tennis, writing on September 18, 2013| 7 Comments »
INVISIBLE FRIENDS 6
Time for a new batch of scribbles inspired by other’s words here, webbed together catching jewelled flies, eating or storing them for colder, frosted mornings…
OBIT.
Terse words
for a long peal of time,
a good,
an only, place ,
for such as he to rest.
—-
GIFT
Even so,
beautiful writing,
a dove released,
vanishing into cloud.
Knowing emptiness is,
at least, knowing something.
—
ASANA
My tongue,
a bookmark,
syllabub syllables,
sutras,
plough with brows furrowed,
let us lotus,
pray pray away,
body buddy bodhi,
enlonged lungs,
a crack of knees
( not a new noise, yknow).
A sound stretching out.
—
CASTLE WALLS
The draw of ruins!
What is it?
The harsh past crumbled back,
mulch,
earth music…..
—-
GHOSTS, FLEAS, A MUSE.
We,
Ghosts
Of poetry,
Stumbling lines,
Echoed,
Staring far off:
The effort
To recall.
—-
HAY BALES
Wheels fallen off the sun wagon.
It falters and droops
towards a fall.
——
COMPOSITION, DECOMPOSITION
A dance in slightest sound:
first mind rolling mutters,
then quiets as pen flows scratching,
the silence between words,
a rush of voices.
Silence is not an absence of sound..
—-
THE GREAT WORK
Selecting or not selecting,
wearing a mask,
choosing a mask,
revealing, hiding.
Dipping in a toe,
how deep these black waters of self?
How fast,
how airlessly drown,
out of depth,
no one watching.
—-
AS WELL
As well as can be.
When we fray thin,
with time or weather,
it’s only a sign, perhaps,
to deepen roots
and not mind the storm winds,
nor the thoughts
circling laments in empty skies….
—-
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged abstracted, Autumn, cyclic, justifications, mused., Poetry, reality, records, reviews, rewrites, tyrrany of certitude on September 17, 2013| 4 Comments »
HISTORIES
This slight remove,
This passion,
This sliver.
A slide towards,
( but not quite ),
Certainty.
A tumbling
Of eventualities
Concentred,
Piled up.
A manufacture
Of futures.
Debris chelated,
Polished, honoured.
A beginning,
A middle, an end.
Bound leaves,
Fragile and
Shattered.
—-
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, landscape, Poetry, Portree, Scotland, Skye, weather on September 16, 2013| 7 Comments »
FIRST SIGNS
The last few days autumn has come with sweeping winds and towering skies. Cold rains between radiant brightness. The birches are yellowing, the hawthorns reddening, the elders turn gold and purple, the swallows have all slipped away. Because it was my habit, a long time ago, to be in the North at the start of autumn, I have felt the pull of the clear cold, the descent of the year, bracken and heather, valley melancholy.
With this sudden,
Southern cold
I would be, again,
In Portree
On a bright morning
Watching the light
Push the small boats
Tethered to the tide
And the gulls
In the upper town calling
From the hills of roofs,
Naming them all :
The clouds and storms
Of coming winter
And with the smell of baking
And the smell of woodsmoke
And the roar of Time,
Shored up by thick walls
And a gathering of smiles.
—-
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, juggling, Orientation, Poetry, priorities, readjustment, roots, scattered, season's end, seedfall, support structures on September 3, 2013| 9 Comments »
A priority of needs,
a hanging garden,
weed words, never planned, disgracing the symmetry, a scurried rush for sunlight before seed fall, a flap of wingtips, the world delighting improvisation.
Failure as a new song,
simmer, ferment, brew.
Rime, surf, time and space foam.
Somehow we know too fast, act too slow. The heart can hold almost everything when it lets go. I, or this voice of I, have breath,
have oracular,
ocular, awkward,
backward walking.
Weed words,
green and flourishing,
through cracks and voids,
softening lines, wishing well, careless though careful. I grope, so to say, a tease of groundsel, a sturdy vowel of plantain. Self-heal and teasel, both mop purple from blue sky ( now the knapweed is hard and dry, a shell bone scatter). Us poets, us weed dreamers, taken up (now the swallows shake apart the dream summer) ripening appled,
though bitter
still delightful
with the turn of things,
the edge of autumn, a juggle of suns, a whisper of moons, a world re-webbed for dew of fallen stars, a cascade of frost. To keep the hearth, to gather in. See breath, turquoise, misted. As long as there is laughter, all is not lost.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, Breadalbane, clouds, Cuillins, dawn, dawn sky, glen garry, hills, Isle of Skye, landscape, lochs, mist, nature, photography, Poetry, portree skye, relections, Scotland, sky, Sleat, sleat isle of skye, TheTrossachs, travel, trees, Trotternish, valleys, water, waves of light on November 13, 2012| 9 Comments »
We recently travelled to the Isle of Skye and the Western Highlands of Scotland. October in Scotland is glorious and the weather was good – not too overcast, not too sunny – so that we were able to see the land in many of its moods and atmospheres. I have selected a few images around the subject of water. I hope you enjoy the visual essay.
Taken from a cafe window in Portree, Skye, early morning looking east.
Fron Ord, Sleat, Isle of Skye, looking across Loch Eishort towards the Black Cuillins.
Clouds reflecting in the still waters of a loch an near Kilt Rock, Trotternish, Skye.
Looking across the sea to Harris from Duntulm, Trotternish, Skye.
Ripples on Loch Bay, Waternish, Skye.
Dawn sky over Kyleakin, Skye. The view from our bedroom window.
Sunrise over Kyleakin, Skye. Waves of light.
Early morning mists lift into the sky over Glen Garry.
Mists, shadows, trees, Glen Garry.
Still waters, slow moving mists. Loch Lochy.
Sunlight enters the woods. Mist rises from the waters. Loch Lochy.
Water-worn pools, Falls of Killin.
Waterside willows, Loch Venachar.
The sky below. Loch Venachar.
The Waters of the World. Loch Venachar.
——
This world
is the Otherworld:
Silver and gold
in turns.
The road flies
to the horizons
where our eyes linger,
longing
for something
right
in front
of
us.
———
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, change, cold, cosmos, dissolution, leaf fall, night, November, Poetry, space, stars, time, Winter on November 5, 2012| 1 Comment »
Cold flame
Crisping leaves:
Autumn stars’
Distant roaring.
Time,
Weightless,
Escapes
Into the endless
Night.
Adrift,
We revolve slowly,
Catching sight
Ocassionally
Of where we
Have been….
simonhlilly 